Hello Am trying to insert a special characcter "ƒ" but its not taking

Question

Hello all ,
Help is greatly appreciated.
Am trying to insert a special character for currency symbol -"ƒ". Below is my insert statement.
INSERT INTO PROD.region
(COUNTRY_ID, CURRENCY_SYMBOL , NAME)
VALUES
(530,'"ƒ"', 'Netherland Antilles' );
I tried from TOAD as well as Sql Plus , but its inserting as "?" for currency symbol column .
So please kindly anyone provide me suggestion how to have the exact value- "ƒ" to be inserted.'

Answer 1

Hello,
this is anything but trivial.
My characterset is
SELECT value
FROM   v$nls_parameters
WHERE  parameter = 'NLS_CHARACTERSET';
WE8ISO8859P15One might assume that inserting the charcter is simply a matter of the correct ascii code
SELECT ASCII('ƒ') x FROM dual;
         X
       191So we set up a test table
DROP TABLE t_nvarchar;
CREATE TABLE t_nvarchar(
     v NVARCHAR2(1)
    ,who VARCHAR2(20)
    );Now we insert some lines using SQL Developer
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES ('ƒ','SQL Developer 1');
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES (N'ƒ','SQL Developer 2');
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES (NCHR(191),'SQL Developer 3');
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES (UNISTR('\0192'),'SQL Developer 4');   
COMMIT;And the same lines using SQL*PLUS
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES ('ƒ','SQL*PLUS 1');
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES (N'ƒ','SQL*PLUS 2');
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES (NCHR(191),'SQL*PLUS 3');
INSERT INTO t_nvarchar (v,who) VALUES (UNISTR('\0192'),'SQL*PLUS 4');   
COMMIT;And what do we get (Executed in SQL Developer, since SQL*PLUS cannot show the "foreign" characters
SELECT v,who,DUMP(v) FROM t_nvarchar;
V WHO                  DUMP(V)          
¿ SQL Developer 1      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
¿ SQL Developer 2      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
¿ SQL Developer 3      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
ƒ SQL Developer 4      Typ=1 Len=2: 1,146
Ÿ SQL*PLUS 1           Typ=1 Len=2: 0,159
Ÿ SQL*PLUS 2           Typ=1 Len=2: 0,159
¿ SQL*PLUS 3           Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
ƒ SQL*PLUS 4           Typ=1 Len=2: 1,146How could it be that SQL*PLUS inserted the character 159 for ƒ?
Because SQL*PLUS uses another characterset by default on my machine
SELECT ASCII('ƒ') x FROM dual;
         X
       159So the only reliable way to insert UNICODE characters is the UNISTR function. And of course this only works when the column can accept these values.
When you repeat the example with a VARCHAR column
DROP TABLE t_nvarchar;
CREATE TABLE t_varchar(
     v VARCHAR2(1)
    ,who VARCHAR2(20)
    );Now we insert some lines using SQL Developer
INSERT INTO t_varchar (v,who) VALUES ('ƒ','SQL Developer 1');
INSERT INTO t_varchar (v,who) VALUES (N'ƒ','SQL Developer 2');
INSERT INTO t_varchar (v,who) VALUES (NCHR(191),'SQL Developer 3');
INSERT INTO t_varchar (v,who) VALUES (UNISTR('\0192'),'SQL Developer 4');   
COMMIT;You don't get what you might expect
SELECT v,who,DUMP(v) FROM t_varchar;
V WHO                  DUMP(V)          
¿ SQL Developer 1      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
¿ SQL Developer 2      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
¿ SQL Developer 3      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191
¿ SQL Developer 4      Typ=1 Len=2: 0,191Regards
Marcus
Edited by: Marwim on 25.03.2013 16:06
Added explanation for value 159 in SQL*PLUS